Let me set the scene: It’s the 2005 National Championship game at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis. Coming off a comfortable 15-point win over Louisville, the Illini were ready to take on one of the most storied programs in college basketball, North Carolina. A win would mean their program would possibly become relevant. A loss and well, status quo: irrelevant.

So like any master motivator, Bruce Weber knew what he had to do: Deliver the words that would lead his men to the promised land. Like Winston Churchill before him, who said:

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”

… Bruce knew this one had to be special. And indeed it was. Ladies and gentlemen, prepared to be moved by the … fist.

+ Matt Dollinger, the Indiana Daily Student beat reporter for the men’s basketball team and friend of ITH, took it upon himself to chart IU’s shot selection against Michigan. The result? IU’s most economical and efficient shots were three-pointers from the wing. {Basketblog}

+ Bloomington South sophomore Spencer Turner makes it no secret what his favorite word is: awesome. It’s awesome that IU is coming to watch him. It’s awesome that Jordan Hulls is going to IU. Tom Crean is an awesome guy. You get the point. {The Hoosier Scoop}

+ Michigan blogger Brian Cook didn’t want to bring it up, but the Wolverines are still painfully young and are not as good as their record. And who are we to disagree with him? {mgoblog}

Quotable:

“Nobody is going to give Indiana a break. Nobody’s looking to give Indiana a favor. Indiana just has to go take it. It’s an unbelievably tough pill to swallow right now.” - Crean on the uphill battle his team faces.

+ Connect to Inside the Hall with Facebook: Inside the Hall readers can now login and post comments using their Facebook account. Just click the Facebook Connect link under the comment box to get started.

Haha, just kidding! That wasn’t fun at all! That was precisely as much fun as a rusty ballpeen hammer to the eye socket, only less violent, so long as you don’t count “throwing an empty can of whatever stupid health drink I’m swilling these days across the f–king room” as violence. The only thing that could have made last night’s second half less fun was if Tom Hamilton and Shon Morris were screaming and rattling off stupid one-liners, respectively, throughout the entire godforsaken telecast. Oh, wait. They were.

F–K.

I mean, really, where to start? With IU’s brilliant, peerless, unbelievable and unlikely first half? With Michigan’s inversely horrible one? With the Hoosiers’ slow descent in the second half? With the way Michigan gradually edged their way back in the game — not at all once, but with the methodical surety of a team absolutely confident of their superiority?

Instead I’ll start (this is sort of a start I guess; the actual start, as you likely noticed, was the angry diatribe at the top of the post) with halftime. Right in the middle, before the flood. IU was winning by a margin I’d honestly rather not recount. A few seconds after the buzzer sounded for halftime, I found myself doing something peculiar: clapping. To myself. This isn’t exactly rare; it happens every time I get even marginally excited about beating some snotty Brit in FIFA 09. But I did catch myself, and stop for a second, and pay attention to my computer again, and think, and that’s when it hit me:

The Dread.

I knew — could feel — that at the very least, Michigan would come back. It wouldn’t last, this success. Michigan would start hitting shots and IU would start missing them and the weird little turnovers Michigan was making would stop, and John Beilein would ramp up the 1-3-1, and whether it happened slowly or quickly or sooner or later the 2008-09 Hoosiers would play like the 2008-09 Hoosiers and bad things would happen. And they did.

Such is life as an IU fan this year. No lead is safe. No success is unblemished by the potential of future failure. And when the Hoosiers do win a Big Ten game, it won’t change this season’s general trajectory. (It will be bloody fun, though.)

———–

I had a whole bunch of little stats and observations I was ready to share, as if to lend some insight, but really, what insight is there to lend? It’s not a marginal thing you can dissect. IU played really, really well in the first half. They made shots. They made so many shots they still turned the ball over a bunch and it didn’t really matter as much. They shot and passed and worked the ball and Michigan didn’t do any of those things, and that was awesome. And then in the second half, they didn’t entirely stop doing those things, but gradually so, and man, you watched the game, right? You saw it.

(I’ll just add, as a general observation, that I’m starting to love Tom Pritchard, and that Devan Dumes is by far the most frustrating player I’ve ever watched, let alone rooted for. You can see the talent there. You know it exists. And every time he does something good, whatever demon sits on Dumes’ shoulder that tells him, “hey, Devan, you know what would be cool is if you ran at the hoop with reckless abandon right now, or shot that stupid 25-foot three, yeah, do it Devan go GO GO DO IT WILL BE FUN,” and Dumes listens. Devan: Stop. Think. Take like one-eighth of a deep breath. Give the demon time to talk himself to death; trust me, he doesn’t need long. After that, do what you must. That’s all I ask.)
———–

No, instead, I’d like to say a few words about Big Ten Network broadcast partners Tom Hamilton and Shon Morris. First, Hamilton:

Tom, hi. Eamonn here. Can I ask you a favor? Just between you and me, and the people that read this blog? Cool. Stop shouting. Stop thinking everything is awesome. When Gus Johnson does it, it’s great; when you do it, it is quite possibly the most annoying thing in the world. Even in the first half, when my favorite college basketball team was playing better than they have played (or might play) all year, you were ruining my experience. A little turnaround jumper is not AN AMAZING SHOT. Michigan’s comeback was not INCREDIBLE. It was to be expected, at least in some regard, and if you didn’t expect it you were broadcasting a game featuring two teams you knew nothing about. Which is worse?

Shon. Hey, Shon. I’m not even going to make fun of your name, dude. I’d prefer to focus on the merits here, and I’ve got to be honest: You occasionally said some insightful things last night. Occasionally. Unfortunately, you liked to punctuate them with what seemed to be prerehearsed lines — and if they seem prerehearsed, they probably are — like “100 percent? I can’t even get 100 percent on a blood test!” Oh, man, the jokes to be made here, Shon. But look, I’m refraining! I assure you, it isn’t easy.

I’m holding back, because I want to be your friend, Shon, and that’s why I tell you this: Stop it with the shtick, and don’t say silly things. There are guys that pull of the college basketball shtick, and there are guys that don’t. Look at Jay Bilas. Dude has no real charisma to speak of, but he’s solid enough and so people don’t mind when he’s covering their games. You don’t need shtick (”Onions!” “Baybee!” etc.) to be a good color guy. Just talk hoops, and be good at it. (Hint: It doesn’t help to tell IU fans that IU will be a Top-3 home court team in the Big Ten this year. I like to remain optimistic, but c’mon, dude.)

Cool? Cool. With my advice, I have no doubt you guys’ll … still not be very good at broadcasting. But this is the Big Ten Network. “Not very good” would be a huge step in the right direction.

———–

Funny, but that last sentence goes for IU, too. Not very good. I’d take that. For a half, we were very good, and it gives me hope. But 20 minutes of “very good” does not a program make. As we found out last night, if you couple it with 20 minutes of “horrible,” it doesn’t even win you a Big Ten game.

We played very good for very long against a borderline Top 25 team, who has beaten the likes Duke and UCLA. The first half was so promising, so full of life, it was a feeling we haven’t felt all year. Good times. Good, yet fleeting times.

IU showed great resilience in their defense all night. Michigan just happened to start hitting in the second half.

Matt Roth. Roth is slowly becoming quite the fan favorite. His game certainly doesn’t jump out at you, but outside of a guy that can dribble drive and slam down a rim-roaring dunk, the deep three that hits nothing but nylon is one of this game of basketball’s pretty plays. He made 3-of-7 attempts from three-point land on the night, for a total of nine points.

Devan Dumes. He’s hot, he’s cold. He’s under control and looking good, he’s wild and taking boneheaded shots. But hey, tonight, he hit some key buckets, and you just need to take the good and bad with Dumes. He shot nine threes tonight, hitting four of them. For the evening, he had 17 points.

Other guys deserving a mention:

Daniel Moore: His mad dribble, dribble, dribble worked on a few occasions, setting up a some shots for his teammates.

Verdell Jones, Nick Williams: Both look more mature, more confident and more under control in their play. This is encouraging.

Tom Pritchard: Solid as a rock.

All and all, a remarkable effort by this squad. Just didn’t pick up the W.

THE BAD AND UGLY:

Six (SIX!!!!!!!) missed free throws in overtime. And um, my heart sinking during the collapse, a collapse I was near certain was going to happen.

I’ll leave the rest of the frustration for E in the morning. Until then …

After a head scratching home loss to Lipscomb to close out 2008 and a road loss to Iowa in the Big Ten opener, the Hoosiers returned to Assembly Hall for a meeting with Michigan, who hadn’t won in Bloomington since 1995.

And with a 44-24 lead with 18:26 remaining, it appeared Indiana was on its way to a win over a team that was ranked in the top 25 as recently as last week with wins over UCLA and Duke.

But in this season of rebuilding, the upset wasn’t in the cards. Michigan closed the second half by outscoring the Hoosiers 35-15 to send the game into overtime and won 72-66 in front of 11,044 fans.

“There are no moral victories,” Indiana freshman guard Verdell Jones said. “We are all competitors and a loss is a loss whether you lose by 30 or you lose by one. We don’t want to feel like this again.”

Even after losing all of their momentum by squandering a 20-point cushion, Indiana had their chances to win in overtime.

But the Hoosiers (5-9, 0-2 Big Ten) hit only 3-of-9 free throws and 2-of-8 from the field in OT for their third straight home loss.

“It’s a unbelievably tough pill to swallow right now,” Crean said. “But they’ve gotta learn real quick that you just gotta turn right back around. Get right back at it and learn from the film.”

Laval Lucas-Perry paced the Wolverines (12-3, 2-1) with 18 points and Manny Harris added 17 points and 11 rebounds. Michigan shot just 39 percent, including 12 of 40 from behind the three-point arc.

Devan Dumes led Indiana with 17 points, Nick Williams scored 14 and Jones scored 13. Tom Pritchard just missed a double-double with nine points and nine rebounds.

• Box score

Up next: Indiana travels to Champaign Saturday afternoon for a 3:00 meeting with Illinois. That game will be televised by the Big Ten Network.

Even a 20-point lead isn’t safe: For the second straight home game, Indiana squandered a 20-point lead.

Indiana natives struggle: Freshman Zack Novak, from Chesteron, scored just six points in 42 minutes and Carmel’s Stu Douglass managed just two points in 18 minutes.

Some select offensive stats:

• Effective FG percentage: 46.9 percent (240th in the nation)
• Turnover percentage: 28.2 percent (341st in the nation)
• Offensive rebounding percentage: 32.9 percent (191st in the nation)
• Adjusted offensive efficiency: 91.6 points per 100 possessions (290th in the nation)

And onwards to defense:

• Effective field goal percentage: 51.6 percent (263rd in the nation)
• Turnover percentage: 24.5 percent (33rd in the nation)
• Offensive rebounding percentage: 35.0 percent (228th in the nation)

Notice anything that sticks out? (Hint: It’s in the title of this post and I’ve bolded it.) Yes, that’s right, you get the gold star: IU opponents are turning the ball over on 24.5 percent of their possessions, good for 33rd best in the nation. Out of all the Hoosiers’ stats, this is their outlier. (If you are unsure of what some of these stats are and would like them explained, peep this and this.)

I noticed this the other week, and have been trying to figure it out since.  Is it luck perhaps? Will conference play significantly alter this number, as IU plays better competition night in and night out? Maybe, but an entire non-conference schedule plus one conference game is a pretty good sample size. Does IU play lockdown defense? Not quite, though their letting up 96.8 points per 100 possessions on the adjusted defensive efficiency tip is good for an OK 98th in the nation.

If I had to take the educated albeit somewhat random guess, I’d venture to say some teams have, how do you say, “played down” to IU’s level. Wake Forest is averaging 16.4 turnovers a game, but against IU they had 24. Gonzaga is sixth — sixth! — in the nation at offensive turnover percentage, as they are turning the ball over to their opponents on 16.5 percent of their possessions. The Hoosiers had them give up two more than their season average.*

*Quick note here: I know I’m sort of breaking a KenPom rule here, as these two examples are turnovers on a per game basis, not per possession. But for the sake of my harebrained idea here, just go with it.

But even going past those two top-tier teams IU has faced, I feel like it’s a case of sloppy begetting sloppy. If the Hoosiers are playing a bit of rag-tag, all-over-the-place brand of basketball, it follows that their opponents are succumbing to it at some points as well.

If this seems totally ridiculous, let me know in the comments. Feel free to agree too, if you’d like.

The Wolverines finished just 10-22 a year ago, but are 11-3 this season and own wins over a pair of top ten teams in UCLA and Duke.

The key to the turnaround: a balanced attack with 10 guys playing over 14 minutes per game and the play of sophomore guard Manny Harris and junior forward DeShawn Sims.

Harris is leading the Big Ten in scoring at 18.8 ppg and is making a living from the foul line. He’s connected on 83 of 95 free throw attempts (87%). The key to stopping Harris may be letting him shoot the three as he’s hitting just 30 percent.

Sims ranks third in the Big Ten in scoring with 16.6 ppg and is the conference leader with 8.8 rebounds per game.

Besides Harris and Sims, three other guards are seeing significant clock for Beilein’s club and two have Indiana ties. Laval Lucas-Perry, a transfer from Arizona, started for the first time in Sunday’s win over Illinois and is the third leading scorer at 11.6 ppg.

Zack Novak, a freshman guard from Chesterton, is one of the biggest surprises in the Big Ten. Beilein inserted Novak into the starting lineup prior to the Big Ten opener against Wisconsin and he responded with 20 points. Novak leads Michigan with in three-pointers made with 23.

“He’s got great confidence in shooting the ball,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “And the other thing that I think he does as well as anybody is this league right now is cut. His cuts are always fast, they’re hard, they’re definitive.”

Stu Douglass, a freshman from Carmel and former teammate of Daniel Moore, has started 13 of 14 games and is scoring 4.8 ppg in 19.3 minutes.

“They are a very good team and there are not a lot of weaknesses to their team,” Crean said. “They know exactly what they want to do and they know exactly who they are”

• Coach Crean audio
• Devan Dumes audio
• Nick Williams audio